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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698120">Zuko Found</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albatt_Ross/pseuds/Albatt_Ross'>Albatt_Ross</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:55:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,287</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albatt_Ross/pseuds/Albatt_Ross</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Zuko struggles to come to terms with his uncle's death as he reflects on his relationship with him. With the looming funeral on the horizon, a revelation occurs to him as his friends help him through his grief.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Zuko Found</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Zuko?”</p><p>“Zuko. Zuko!”</p><p>A weary Fire Lord Zuko looked up hastily from the 4-foot long trail of parchment that trailed between his robes.</p><p>“Zuko, are you alright?”</p><p>The person speaking to him was a man standing in the doorway whom he recognised presently as the hardened-faced, bald Avatar, but remembered always as the energetic Airbender boy of so many years ago.</p><p>Zuko gave Aang a weak smile. “Fine.”</p><p>Aang returned an equally accommodating smile and edged closer into the room.</p><p>“May I come in?”</p><p>“Of course,” said Zuko, pushing himself slightly away from his cluttered desk.</p><p>Aang swept into the room and headed towards the large sofa that sat in the corner. Though aged far beyond his sprightly and buoyant years, Zuko could not help but notice, still, that slight bounce of optimism in Aang’s step as he crossed the room to sit in the gloomier corner of the study. This moment of reminiscence was cut short however, when Aang sat to face Zuko. His eyes were indisputably etched with concern. The two men shared a moment of silence until Aang spoke.</p><p>“We’re worried about you, you know. All of us.”</p><p>Zuko looked away immediately, staring blankly at the parchment still unfurled across his desk. A sizzling guilt burned a hole in his stomach. Aang continued.</p><p>“Katara said I should come by and –”</p><p>“Well maybe she was wrong,” Zuko cut across, far more aggressively than he would have liked. Aang fell silent as the hole inside Zuko’s stomach seared at the edges.</p><p>“What do you want us to do?” Aang finally said.</p><p>A damn good question, Zuko thought. It was as if the answers themselves had fallen through the ever-growing chasm in his body – into an oblivion, never to be discovered.</p><p>“Zuko, you and I both know this is not how he would have wanted it to be.”</p><p>Zuko stood up, causing his chair to teeter precariously on its back legs.</p><p>“You don’t know what he would have wanted.” He tore his eyes away from the parchment and directed them towards the stricken-faced Aang whose blue arrow tattoo on his forehead peered from the shadow-cast corner. “I think you need to leave.”</p><p>Aang’s face fell with a mournful look that only infuriated the Fire Lord further. He stood up and approached the doorway, his bounce absent this time. But as he stood just behind the door, he stopped and looked sideways in Zuko’s direction.</p><p>“Don’t think I don’t know what it’s like,” and he swiftly disappeared out of the room, swinging the door behind him just enough to leave it ajar.</p><p>Zuko sat down, staring once again at the parchment in front of him. It was blank, save for the few words inscribed at the top in his elegant handwriting.</p><p>
  <em>Eulogy to Iroh, my uncle.</em>
</p><p>His eyes ran over the words again and again, taking them in each time as if transfixed upon a shapeshifting form. It was a feeling that was utterly foreign to him. He had felt loss, yes, and grief especially. The funeral for his mother was an experience that had overwhelmed him so much so that he had cried the entire day. She had, after all, sacrificed her very memory of him to keep him safe as a child only to be repaid when Zuko found her years later and subsequently brought those memories back to her.</p><p>But Iroh.</p><p>Though the swirling pot of emotions stewed within him, equally incomprehensible as they were powerful, Zuko knew without a doubt what Iroh had done for him. Had it not been for his uncle, Zuko knew where he’d be, though he dared not think about it anymore. It was far too chilling to remember his life as the exiled Prince, son of the murderous Fire Lord Ozai and disgraced heir to the then-bloody and imperialist throne.</p><p>Though Zuko had betrayed Iroh so many times, the man had stayed for him. Despite the abhorrent things Zuko had said to the man when he was at his lowest point in exile, his uncle – uncle Iroh – had continued to believe in him. And now, all that was left were the things he ought to have said to him instead. All that was left was the blank piece of parchment that stared back at Zuko, waiting for him to say them.</p><p>But what do you say when it’s already too late?</p><p>Something hit the parchment with a small <em>tap</em> and a perfectly circular blotch appeared on its surface. It was small, but Zuko noticed it at once: a dark imprint on the otherwise sallow paper. He watched the teardrop run slowly down the parchment, noticing how it slowed at points to grip to the porous surface. It looked like it was trying to escape, he thought.</p><p>“Zuko.”</p><p>He turned suddenly to face the doorway, ripped from his thoughts and there, stood a figure he knew at once to be Katara, wrapped in her deep-blue shawls and her hair tied in a neat bun. Upon seeing his wet face, she ran over to him and threw her arms around his shoulders in a tight embrace which he returned. As they let go of one another, Zuko noticed her eyes were fixed upon the desk behind him and when he turned, understood why.</p><p>“It’s tough,” he said, also looking at the parchment. Katara looked up and he met her gaze. She was smiling sympathetically.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Zuko’s eyes shifted away suddenly as the searing embers of the hole in his stomach flared with a guilty glow. “Did Aang talk to you?”</p><p>Katara nodded. “He said you were pretty upset.”</p><p>Zuko continued to avoid her gaze. He shouldn’t have gotten so upset with him. He knew Aang was only trying to help. Katara bent down to meet Zuko’s seated level.</p><p>“He’s fine, Zuko. You’ve done a lot worse.”</p><p>For the first time that week, Zuko let out a light chuckle. If there was ever a silver lining to his long-gone days as a young, exiled Prince, determined to capture the Avatar he now considered friend, it was that they were an uncontested benchmark for measuring Zuko’s comparably small but frequent outbursts of anger as an adult.</p><p>Katara held out her hand to grab one of his, which were resting quite unnaturally on his knees, clenched into balls of unconscious resistance. At this, he immediately felt his arms relax. She always had an uncanny way of calming others by a mere touch. Zuko wiped the semi-dried tear from his face with his other hand and looked into Katara’s calm and consoling eyes.</p><p>“I just don’t know what to say,” he said simply.</p><p>Katara smiled and patted his hand with hers. “Just describe who he was to you.”</p><p>Zuko shook his head. “But there’s so much – too much – to say.”</p><p>Katara stood up and looked at the blank parchment on the table next to them.</p><p>“Sometimes, what you think <em>needs</em> to be said has, in fact, already been said. You just don’t know it.”</p><p>Zuko smiled. “You sound just like him.” Katara looked at him, returning it.</p><p>“Fortunately for all of us, he was a wise man that didn’t keep his secrets.” She turned to leave but stopped halfway and looked back at him.</p><p>“He loved you Zuko. You know that.” Zuko nodded but remained silent. “Don’t speak for him. Speak for all of us – the parts you want <em>us </em>to hear,” and with that, she left the room.</p><p>Zuko looked down at the parchment for what seemed like the hundredth time that evening. This time, however, he knew what he wanted to say. He crossed out the title and began writing beneath it.</p><p><em>Iroh</em>, he wrote.</p><p>
  <em>The uncle as we all knew him.</em>
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